The Break

by Ronnie O'Sullivan

  ‘Well, I suppose that’s because in a way he was to me,’ said Snaresby. ‘Metaphorically speaking. What with him having turned his back on our noble profession and taken the cloth.’

  Nicholls had become a vicar, of all bloody things. ‘Maybe because he felt guilty,’ Frankie said. ‘Because of everything you and him and Craig Fenwick did. Because of how corrupt you all were.’ He’d said this last bit loud enough for a couple of people next to them to have turned.

  ‘You’d better watch your mouth, young man,’ said Snaresby, stepping in. ‘Because that’s slanderous, that is. And something I could nick you for right here.’

  But instead of backing off, Frankie grinned so hard it nearly split his face. Because there – right there in the centre of Snaresby’s eyes, he could see it – that flicker of doubt, of fear. The first time he’d ever seen him rattled. But because of what? Well, that could only be one thing. Because he knew Frankie was on to him and because he did have something to hide.

  Frankie shouldered past him. Hard.

  ‘Don’t you . . . you come back here,’ Snaresby growled after him.

  But Frankie just kept on walking. Because he wasn’t the one who’d done anything wrong. Not like he now knew in his guts that bastard had.

  7

  Corrupt. That was the word that had done it, that had triggered Snaresby. That and linking the three of them together. Him, Fenwick and Nicholls. The old gang.

  Only they weren’t history, were they? Not for Frankie. And that’s what had really got to Snaresby, wasn’t it? The fact that Frankie still cared, still saw them as linked together, even now after Nicholls was dead. Yeah, Frankie might already be a dog in some people’s books, but he was one in Snaresby’s now too. Only not just any old dog and certainly not a lapdog. More like a terrier. One that would never stop digging. One that would never let go.

  He was still smiling at Snaresby’s reaction – at that knowledge, written there in his bulging eyes, that there was still something buried in his past that Frankie could expose – when he picked up his jet-black Capri from the multi-storey just down the road from the Ambassador Club.

  Heading south of the river over Vauxhall Bridge and down through Lambeth, he let the V8 engine rip, remembering that first day the Old Man had let him drive it, just after he’d turned seventeen and had passed his test. They’d headed up into Essex that afternoon and had caned it through the country lanes and out onto the M25, when the Old Man had told him to really put his foot down and see what she could do.

  Exhilarating. That’s how it had felt then and how it felt now too, as Frankie finished the stop/start run of traffic lights through Stockwell and Brixton Hill. And exhilarating . . . yeah, that’s how it still felt too, thinking about Detective Inspector Snaresby’s purpling face . . . like a naughty little boy who’d just been caught out.

  He parked the Capri in the maze of side streets round the back of HM Prison Brixton, having the same nightmare of finding a spot as he always did whenever he visited the Old Man. Staring at the empty seat beside him for a moment, all the triumph he’d been feeling dropped away. Seven years already, the Old Man had been inside, with still another eight years of his sentence left to run – unless Frankie could somehow find proof that he shouldn’t be in there at all.

  He went through the usual rigmarole of security, before grabbing a table in the already crowded Visitors’ Room to wait. A stink of floor polish and Cup-a-Soups. Mumbled conversations all around. He’d got changed before heading over here . . . into casuals, his old Levis, Nikes, and a plain white T . . . the kind of gear he always wore whenever he visited . . . because the one time he’d come here in the usual suit he wore whenever he was bossing the club, he’d hated it, seeing the Old Man’s eyes looking him up and down, missing all the pukka clothes he’d used to like wearing himself when he’d still been on the outside.

  ‘All right, son,’ the Old Man said, walking over towards him now in his badly fitting grey jogging bottoms and sweatshirt. ‘Not like you to be in on a Wednesday.’

  His voice was all big and boomy. All fuck off and hard. Not for Frankie’s benefit, mind. More for all the other inmates chattering in the background. Didn’t matter how long the Old Man had been in here, Frankie never got used to it, the lack of proper privacy. The fact that everything here was all about show. That you could never properly relax.

  ‘Yeah, sorry about the short notice, Dad.’

  ‘Slim sick, is he?’

  Wednesday was normally Slim’s day to visit. Him and the Old Man went back, way back, like as far as the Stone Age. Slim had already been working the bar down the Ambassador Club when the Old Man had first leased it in ’84 and the two of them had been firm friends ever since.

  ‘Nah . . .’ Frankie said.

  The Old Man pulled up a chair and sparked up a fag, all in one fluid motion. He leant back in his chair, looking Frankie over.

  ‘So how come you’ve switched with him and come in today?’ he asked.

  Nothing got past him. Or at least where Frankie was concerned. Never had. No point in bullshitting him either. He knew Frankie too well, even more so, in a weird way, since he’d been inside. Had more time to focus on him when they were together these days. Wasn’t so distracted by running the club and trying to make ends meet.

  ‘Just wanted to give you the heads-up on something,’ Frankie said, keeping his voice nice and low. God only knew how many of the other forty or so lads in the room had connections with either the Riley or the Hamilton gangs.

  ‘On?’

  ‘I had to go down Terence Hamilton’s funeral and Listerman got wind of it. The only thing I could think of to tell him was that I’d gone there because you and Terence had been at school together. You know, to kind of pay your respects.’

  ‘My fucking what? To that prick. I wouldn’t have pissed on Terence Hamilton if he’d been on fire, alive or dead.’

  Bernie James smiled a jagged-toothed smile, as if picturing the scenario for real. In spite of a few spare pounds of paunch pressing up against his sweatshirt, he was still in pretty good shape, broad-shouldered and toned from working out down the prison gym. Yeah, Frankie reckoned he could have still taken Terence Hamilton, all right. Even before he’d got sick.

  ‘I know, I’m sorry. It’s all I could think of,’ Frankie said.

  ‘And what did Listerman say?’

  ‘He looked . . . well, a bit surprised . . . a bit like you do now . . . Look, Dad, it won’t get you in any trouble, will it? Because if it does –’

  ‘No, forget it. If anyone asks, I’ll tell them it’s true. Tell them I was stoned, or something, when I asked you . . . tell them I made a stupid mistake . . .’

  ‘Thanks.’

  The Old Man stared at him evenly. Hard eyes. Something of the shine of a black ball about them. Eyes that had used to be gentle sometimes. Something that had been lost. ‘And is that what you’ve made?’ he asked. ‘Some kind of stupid mistake too?’

  And there it was again. Nothing getting past him. Frankie nodded, feeling sick to his guts having to admit it in front of him like this, like he’d failed his GCSE bleedin’ French all over again, like he’d failed his bleedin’ life.

  ‘Cos I can’t see any other reason, you being there at that funeral, unless you’d somehow got yourself in hock to him or his kid.’

  Frankie sighed, feeling his shoulders slump. Even if it had been safe to talk about it in here, where would he start? The pistol Dougie Hamilton currently had in his possession was the same one the Old Man had made sure Frankie got a hold of two years ago for protection when all that nightmare had been going down with Jack. And not only did it now have Frankie’s prints all over it, but driving over here just now he’d started wondering what if it had the Old Man’s prints on it too. Meaning that if Dougie Hamilton ever did come good on his threat to hand it over to the cops, they might end up getting two sets of James men’s prints on a murder weapon for the price of one. And then there was whatever that pistol
might have been used for before. God only knew where the Old Man had got it and whether its ballistics might match up to anything else.

  ‘I know you can’t talk about it now . . . here . . . but if I can offer a word of advice, son,’ the Old Man said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Don’t put your life – or your liberty – in the hands of either of them, not bloody Dougie Hamilton, but not Listerman and Tommy Riley either.’

  Well, it was too late for that, and the Old Man must have seen it too in his eyes.

  ‘But if you do have to choose between them,’ he went on, ‘then you choose based on who you think you can trust the most, and who you think can get you the furthest, and whatever decision you make, you make sure you make it for yourself, and with an eye to the future, your future, not theirs . . . an eye to winning, son.’

  The way he said it, the look that went with it, it was obvious he wasn’t just talking about his own loyalties to Tommy here. No, he was talking about something bigger than that. About Frankie somehow using them instead of them using him, of somehow putting himself completely out of their reach, of somehow coming out on top.

  ‘But you do still know I don’t want this, Dad,’ he said. This. He meant this life. His own life being tangled up with theirs. Because he still wanted to build a future for himself off the bloody streets and away from bastards like the Hamiltons and Rileys of this world and everything they stood for and did.

  ‘Beggars can’t be choosers,’ said the Old Man. ‘Sometimes that’s just how it is.’

  He could have been talking about himself, about how he’d ended up in here.

  ‘What about that detective?’ the Old Man asked.

  He meant Matt Dyer, the private investigator Frankie had hired at the end of last year to look into his case – and, specifically, into the people who might have been instrumental in framing him. Dyer was a retired copper himself, but one who’d specialized in investigating bent cops back in the eighties for the Police Complaints Authority. Even better, he was a Jock with no London connections, so had no compunction whatsoever about having a good nosey round in the Met.

  ‘Still nothing,’ Frankie said.

  A weekly question. The same answer. But that had been part of the deal with Dyer. He only took on cases he thought he could make a difference to, he only got paid on results, and he’d only be in touch if he found something.

  The Old Man nodded and sparked up a fag.

  ‘I did bump into Snaresby, though,’ Frankie said.

  ‘What? Where? I told you to keep away from him. If he even suspected –’ The Old Man had dropped his voice down to a whisper again, but Frankie held up his hand anyway. He knew what he was going to say. That Snaresby might try to stitch Frankie up himself if he ever got wind of the fact that Matt Dyer was looking into him too.

  ‘I didn’t mention Dyer at all. I did ask him about Nicholls, though,’ Frankie said.

  The Old Man looked away, annoyed.

  ‘I couldn’t help myself. I asked him why he’d lied to me about him already being dead.’

  ‘And what did he say?’

  ‘It’s not what he said, it’s how he looked. He’s fucking guilty, Dad. I know it. It’s because of him you’re inside.’

  ‘And what about . . . the third little piggy,’ the Old Man asked.

  He meant Fenwick, the other cop who’d put him away and who’d since moved to Australia.

  ‘Still no news on him either. But Dyer said he’s looking into it. We’re just going to have to be patient and wait.’

  ‘And Kerr?’

  Yet another little piece of the puzzle they had Matt Dyer working on. Frankie had shown the Old Man the photograph he’d stolen from Nicholls’s flat after he’d hanged himself. It had shown Fenwick, alongside Nicholls and Snaresby, but there’d been a fourth man there too. And one the Old Man had recognized as well. A Soho face. Danny Kerr. An accountant. A bent one, who’d died in a car crash a few years back. But Dyer had said he was going to look into the circumstances surrounding that too.

  ‘Again, nothing . . .’

  ‘Fine.’ The Old Man nodded, resigned to the fact. He smiled. ‘Let’s talk football then,’ he said. ‘So what do you reckon to Ian Wright’s chances of getting over two hundred club goals by the end of the season?’

  But even as they sat there chatting through all things Arsenal, Frankie couldn’t help thinking about what the Old Man had just said. About him maybe having a choice to make between Hamilton and Riley. And about whether it was already too late, because Hamilton already had him onside. And about what Riley would do if he ever found out Frankie was working for the other side. He’d fuck him, he would. And not just Frankie. Because his reach went way, way deeper than that. Into Jack’s life. Here into Brixton Prison too.

  Yeah, get caught crossing Tommy Riley and it wasn’t just Frankie who’d end up getting royally screwed. His whole sodding family would too.

  8

  The next dog whistle to summon Frankie James from his otherwise already frantic existence blew shrilly in his ears two days later on the afternoon of Friday 5th September, just as he’d finished running through the latest tournament paperwork with the Old Man’s cousin, Kind Regards.

  ‘Who was that?’ asked Xandra, clearly spotting the fact that the corners of Frankie’s mouth were doing their best to hang down around his ankles in despair.

  ‘No one. Wrong number.’

  What the caller had actually said, in her by now horribly familiar South African tones, was, ‘There’s a black cab waiting for you outside the Raymond Revuebar. The driver knows where to take you. Now hurry up. The meter’s running and you know he doesn’t like to be kept waiting.’

  Kind Regards looked up at him over his half-moon specs, from where he was still going through the fine print of the contracts he’d got laid out on the bar.

  ‘All looking good,’ he said, ‘I just need your signature here . . . here . . . and here.’

  Frankie took out the Old Man’s pen and signed where Kind Regards had indicated.

  Kind Regards snapped his case shut and tapped its lid. ‘I’ll get them their copies back. All looking good, though. The boy done good.’

  ‘Thanks again.’ Frankie meant it. Kind Regards had been bossing all the legal work for the tournament right from the get-go. And all at cost.

  Frankie said his goodbyes and headed out, telling Xandra he was off to check round the local pubs to see that Dickie Bird had indeed distributed and flyposted the flyers as per his instructions. He was dressed well down, in shorts and a T-shirt, but, sod it, would Dougie even care?

  He got to the rendezvous Viollet had given him in under five minutes. The cab was there waiting as promised, outside the strip club, or gentlemen’s club, as its owner Paul Raymond preferred.

  It turned out the meter running line was just a metaphor. There was no meter. No cab driver either. Just the massive bulk of The Saint wedged into the driver’s seat. He was picking at the ginger stubble on his head, glowering at Frankie in the rearview.

  ‘I wouldn’t let Dougie catch you moonlighting like this,’ Frankie said, yanking the door shut.

  ‘Good to see you keeping your sense of humour up,’ said The Saint. ‘That’s what they did in the war, according to my old mum. Even when they knew they were doomed.’

  The Saint pulled away.

  ‘So what’s with the cab then?’ Frankie asked.

  ‘One of Dougie’s initiatives. He says we’re much less likely to ever get stopped by the filth in one of these, when we’re out and about on firm business.’

  ‘But don’t people just, I don’t know, flag you down all the time and try and get in?’

  ‘With a face like mine, scrote? That happens a lot less than you think.’ The Saint sneezed. ‘Fucking hay fever,’ he growled, reaching for the stereo. ‘Streisand,’ he said, shoving a cassette tape in. ‘I saw her live once, you know. Out in Vegas four years ago. I flew over specially, like. Absolute magic, she was. Not a
dry eye in the house.’

  The sound of Babs singing ‘Don’t Rain on My Parade’ washed over Frankie as The Saint drove on and the Soho streets flowed by.

  ‘Cheer up, son. It might never happen,’ said The Saint, flashing him a brown-stained grin. ‘Oh dear, it already has.’

  The cab started slowing down around twenty minutes later. Limehouse. Narrow Street, to be precise. What used to be the heartland of London’s docks, but these days was just full of old warehouses being converted into offices and flats.

  They passed The Grapes on their left. One of London’s oldest and bestest boozers, with its own little riverside terrace. Everyone from Pepys to Dickens to Arthur Conan Doyle had got hammered in there over the years. Including Frankie James on his nineteenth birthday. He could still remember throwing up in the Thames.

  The Saint pulled over a hundred yards on. An old brick building, three storeys high. Frankie gazed up at the windows glinting in the sun. No way to tell if anyone was home.

  ‘Out,’ said The Saint. ‘Punch the buzzer on the door.’

  ‘Where are we?’

  ‘Are you deaf, scrote? I said out.’

  The Saint turned up the volume and stared straight ahead as Streisand continued to blare out ‘Memory’. It looked like something was glistening at the corner of his eye. But nah, it couldn’t really have been a tear, could it? Must just have been a trick of the light.

  Frankie walked up to the building’s front door. Just the one buzzer. Meaning what? This whopping, sodding place was privately owned? But owned by who?

  He pressed the buzzer, half expecting to hear footsteps approaching and then see a butler appear. Instead all he got was a click as the door swung open, with no one to be seen inside at all. So maybe it was haunted then? Or Dracula’s pad? Who knew?

  Frankie shivered as he stepped inside. He didn’t trust Dougie further than he could spit. Inside it was gloomy and stank of petrol. What windows Frankie could see, as the door creaked shut behind him, were high up and so choked with cobwebs and ivy that hardly any light could get through. Enough, though, to see that this was in fact a garage. And there, plumb centre in the middle of the room, were three of the most beautiful cars Frankie had ever seen.